Oscar Bait

This year's Oscar race had been particularly up in the air right up through the end of 2011, with critics groups and precursory galas bestowing honors across the board rather than to a single clear frontrunner as is usually the case. Now that we're a month deep into 2012, however, the clear and inarguable Best Picture frontrunner is The Weinstein Company's much-ballyhooed silent B&W comedy "The Artist," which has been in the thick of Oscar pundit predix since debuting to wild applause back in May at Cannes.

The problem with being declared likely Best Picture victor too early is, of course, the inevitable backlash of haters and naysayers who swing back at populist success with collectively self-righteous fury. Last year, it was "The Social Network" all the way through December, until Big Papa Weinstein pulled out the big guns and fired on all PR cylinders for "The King's Speech" to steamroll into the new year and sweep the gauntlet of Oscar glory in proud displacement of Fincher & Zuckerberg.

"Haaaaah-RUMPH! I can't believe I have to sit through this black-and-white silent movie!"

I usually fall on the side of backlashers every year when it comes to embracing Oscar's overrated golden children, whether they get a bagful of trophies or merely just ride the winds of populism to an annoying degree: "The King's Speech," "Slumdog Millionaire," "Juno," "Crash," "A Beautiful Mind," you get it. I had assumed I would feel similarly about "The Artist," given the unanimously slathered displays of adoration from critics early on. It hasn't exactly set the box office on fire like its more mall-friendly crossover antecedents, but a black-and-white silent movie shouldn't statistically be expected to gross even six figures in 2012 so $15 million+ on fewer than 500 screens between Thanksgiving and the Oscar noms is nothing to scoff at. What I mean to say is, obviously audiences love this shit too, which only fortified my predetermination of opinion about "The Artist."


Michael was here in L.A. last week, so we finally stopped putting it off and saw "The Artist" together, seeing as it had finally bagged all the Oscar nominations (+Best Picture wins at the Golden Globes and Producers Guild, Best Director from the DGA, etc.) that were so irritatingly destined. We saw a matinee at the Grove, an outdoor mall adjacent L.A.'s famed Farmer's Market that smells like Abercrombie cologne and feels like a Vegas version of Santaland, complete with a double-decker trolley. The movie theatre is as industrialized as any old mall cineplex, except it is so lavishly appointed to look and feel like a sparkling relic from Old Hollywood glamour fantasy nostalgia. So, it's spelled theatre, not theater, and would be the perfect place to see something as insistently old-fashioned yet obviously artificial as "The Artist," right?

RIGHT! "The Artist" is every bit as special as the rapturous applause would suggest, dancing it's charming little dervish and sweeping the audience away to talkie-era Hollywood with a pair of dazzling leads and a lot of fancy footwork from writer/director Michel Hazanavicius (previously best known for the cheeky "OSS 177" trilogy, a Gallic riff on James Bond, and mostly just in France at that). I am almost embarrassed by how much I enjoyed it.

Jean Dujardin & Bérénice Bejo play an aging silent-era matinee idol & the fresh-faced starlet he plucks from the extras line and into the spotlight. As George Valentin and Peppy Miller, the outgoing and ingoing, er, spokespeople of dueling cinematic eras in pre-Technicolor Hollywood, Dujardin & Bejo are more expressive without words than most actors manage with 100 pages of dialogue. The entire production is an immersive experience, and it took no longer than five minutes for my resistance to the "black-and-white silent film" trappings to surrender and escape.

A French production set and filmed entirely in Los Angeles, the resulting confection of "The Artist" is something close to magic. It's a silent movie, so nobody speaks French, duh, so the effect is totally unique. I really love this movie and didn't expect it. It's really cool to have the experience of seeing a silent B&W film on the big screen for the very first time, a hundred years after its heyday, and seeing exactly why audiences took to Hollywood so enthusiastically with entertainment like this.